Naomi Judd dealing with bipolar disorder when she died by suicide, autopsy says

Medical examiner’s report confirms country star shot and killed herself in April and had been managing post-traumatic stress

Grammy-winning country musician Naomi Judd was struggling with bipolar disorder when she shot herself and died at her home in Tennessee earlier this year, according to a report released Friday by the local medical examiner, and a statement from her family added that she was dealing with post-traumatic stress, too.

Judd and her family had previously discussed in largely general terms her long battle with depression prior to her death by suicide at the end of April. But the report Friday from the Nashville medical examiner’s office, along with the statement from Judd’s relatives, offered the most complete description yet of the mental illnesses surrounding her depression.

In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 and online chat is also available. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org

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Ethiopia: airstrike hits playground in Tigray, killing at least seven

Medical officials say three children among those killed as fighting resumes in northern Ethiopia days after a truce collapsed

An airstrike on a children’s playground has killed at least seven people in the capital of Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, medical officials there said, in the first such attack after a four-month-old ceasefire collapsed this week.

The officials said three children were among the dead but a federal government spokesperson denied any civilian casualties.

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Dow plunges 1,000 points after Fed chief Powell warns of inflation ‘pain’

US stock markets nosedive as Jerome Powell says at top bank summit the ‘overarching focus is to bring inflation back down’

US stock markets nosedived on Friday after Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, warned of “pain” ahead as the central bank struggles to bring down inflation from a 40-year high.

Powell’s highly anticipated speech was more hawkish than had been expected, with the Fed chair pledging to do all he could to end rising prices. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost just over 1,000 points, 3%, the S&P fell 3.3% and the Nasdaq dropped almost 4%.

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Six of 43 missing Mexican students were kept alive in warehouse for days

Students were then turned over to commander of the local army base who ordered their killings

Six of the 43 Mexican students forcibly disappeared in 2014 were allegedly kept alive in a warehouse for days, and then turned over to the commander of the local army base who ordered their killings, the Mexican government official leading the Truth Commission said Friday.

The interior undersecretary, Alejandro Encinas, made the revelation with little fanfare during a lengthy defense of the commission’s report, first released a week earlier. At that time, despite declaring the disappearances a “state crime” and saying that the army watched it happen without intervening, Encinas made no mention of six students being turned over to Col José Rodríguez Pérez.

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Florida governor suspends school board quartet over Parkland shooting report

Ron DeSantis acts on recommendation in report from grand jury investigating 2018 shooting in which 17 people were killed

The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, on Friday suspended four members of the Broward county school board, acting on a recommendation in a report from a grand jury investigating the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school shooting in which 17 people were killed.

In a statement accompanying his executive order, DeSantis said: “It is my duty to suspend people from office when there is clear evidence of incompetence, neglect of duty, misfeasance or malfeasance.”

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36,000km in three days: $8,000 car rental charge shocks Canadian woman

Giovanna Boniface received an $8,000 bill from Avis after driving roughly 300km around Toronto and surrounding area

Car rental companies have long earned a reputation for gouging customers, penny-pinching on frills and finding new and unscrupulous ways to charge for add-ons.

But a Canadian woman says she was billed thousands in extra mileage after a rental company claimed she drove a distance nearly the circumference of the Earth over a three-day period.

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Hungary approves construction of two Russian-built nuclear reactors

Work to begin in coming weeks in move that emphasises ties between Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin

Hungary has announced that the €12.5bn (£10.6bn) construction of two nuclear reactors by Russia’s Rosatom will begin in the coming weeks after regulators approved the project.

The war in Ukraine has not deterred Hungary’s interest in the project to add to the four reactors already operating at the Paks plant outside Budapest.

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Briton who was Netflix’s ‘ultimate conman’ flees French police

Robert Hendy-Freegard, subject of Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman documentary, may face attempted murder charges

A British conman who was the subject of a Netflix documentary is on the run and facing possible attempted murder charges in France after injuring two police officers while fleeing a raid, local officials have said.

Robert Hendy-Freegard had been illegally breeding dogs while living in the French village of Vidaillat, according to the local mayor, Martine Laporte.

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Russia-Ukraine war: EU to hold urgent talks over Russian ‘energy war’; Ukraine announces mandatory evacuations – as it happened

This live blog has now closed, you can find our latest coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war here

When Mikhail Sokolov signed up to work for the FSB security services, he never imagined his journey would end here: in a crowded refugee camp on the outskirts of a sleepy town in the rural Netherlands.

“The last six years were a rollercoaster. I am happy I am no longer in the claws of the FSB,” the former FSB informant and staffer for the jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption network said in an interview with the Guardian this week.

[The new names] should perpetuate the memory of significant historical events of Ukraine, as well as famous figures and heroes who glorified Ukraine and fought for the independence of our state.”

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German police investigate drowning of British boys, 7 and 9, at lake resort

The boys, thought to be brothers, were on holiday at the Eiserbachsee in Simmerath, near Aachen

German police say they are investigating the death of two British boys who drowned in a lake in western Germany on Thursday evening.

The boys, aged seven and nine, were pulled from the Eiserbachsee near Aachen after their parents reported them missing. Doctors fought overnight to save their lives but they were pronounced dead in hospital in the early hours of Friday morning.

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Chinese city’s residents made to queue for Covid tests in heat above 40C

Chongqing authorities criticised for move as area faces heatwave, wildfires, severe drought and power outages

Residents of the south-western Chinese city of Chongqing have been queueing on the streets to be tested for Covid, despite extreme temperatures that have soared past 40C (104F) this week.

Photos posted on Chinese social media also showed health workers testing residents while wearing full hazmat suits in the heatwave. Other images showed that the tests were being carried out while bushfires raged in the background, prompting descriptions of the situation as “apocalyptic”.

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Pakistan declares emergency as floods hit over 30 million people

Authorities say more than 900 killed and 220,000 homes destroyed in worst monsoon rains disaster for a decade

Heavy rain has pounded large areas of Pakistan as the government declared an emergency to deal with monsoon flooding it said had affected more than 30 million people.

The annual monsoon is essential for irrigating crops and replenishing lakes and dams across the Indian subcontinent, but each year it also brings a wave of destruction.

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India ruling party legislator arrested over prophet remarks amid protests

T Raja Singh suspended earlier this week for hate speech after allegedly abusive comments

Police in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad have arrested a suspended leader of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) for making allegedly abusive remarks about the prophet Muhammad.

Police arrested T Raja Singh, 45, on Thursday after thousands of Muslims took to the streets in the city protesting against his speech.

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Colombia’s leftwing government unveils tax-the-rich plan to tackle poverty

President Gustavo Petro’s proposed legislation could raise $11.5bn a year with measures including wealth tax and levy on oil exports

Colombia’s new leftist government has proposed an ambitious plan to tax the rich in an effort to combat poverty in one of the most unequal countries in the Americas.

If implemented, the Piketty-esque legislation proposed by President Gustavo Petro could raise more than $11.5bn annually to fund anti-poverty efforts, free public university and other social welfare programs.

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Federal judge orders release of redacted Trump search affidavit

Affidavit is expected to contain information about investigation into Trump’s retention of government secrets at Mar-a-Lago

A federal judge ordered on Thursday that the affidavit justifying the search warrant used to seize sensitive government documents from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida earlier this month should be partly unsealed according to redactions proposed by the justice department.

The order from Judge Bruce Reinhart, who approved the FBI search warrant and is overseeing the case, instructed the justice department to release a redacted version of the affidavit that he had reviewed before noon on Friday.

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US judge orders Trump Mar-a-Lago affidavit to be unsealed with redactions – as it happened

Bruce Reinhart gives US government until noon ET Friday to make the redacted document public

As midterm election campaigns hit the home stretch over the next two months, voters may start seeing a familiar Democratic face: Barack Obama.

Axios reports that the former president is scheduled to appear at two upcoming fundraisers for the party, one of which is focused on Democrats’ campaign to maintain their majority in the Senate, which they seem slightly favored to do.

The submission by the Justice Department is a significant legal milepost in an investigation that has swiftly emerged as a major threat to Mr. Trump, whose lawyers have offered a confused and at times stumbling response. But it is also an inflection point for Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, who is trying to balance protecting the prosecutorial process by keeping secret details of the investigation, and providing enough information to defend his decision to request a search unlike any other in history.

“There are clearly opposed poles here,” said Daniel C. Richman, a former federal prosecutor and a law professor at Columbia University, who said it might be difficult, even impossible, for Mr. Garland to strike the right balance.

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Latvia topples Soviet-era obelisk amid backlash against Russia

Parliament voted in May to demolish Riga monument to Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany

A concrete obelisk topped by Soviet stars that was the centrepiece of a monument to the Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany was taken down in Latvia’s capital on Thursday, the latest in a series of Soviet monuments brought down after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Heavy machinery was spotted behind a green privacy fence at the foot of the nearly 80-metre (260ft) obelisk shortly before it was felled. The column, which had stood like a high-rise in central Riga, crashed into a nearby pond, causing a huge splash at Victory Park.

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Shelling temporarily disconnects Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant from Ukraine grid

Russian-held site forced to fall back on diesel generators, raising risk of catastrophic failure of cooling systems

Fires caused by shelling cut the last remaining power line to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on Thursday, temporarily disconnecting it from Ukraine’s national grid for the first time in nearly 40 years of operation, the country’s nuclear power firm, Energoatom, has said.

There have been growing international concerns about safety at Europe’s largest nuclear plant. It has been occupied by Russian forces since the start of the war, and they are now using it to house military vehicles and equipment.

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Vladimir Putin signs decree to increase size of Russian armed forces

Order to increase personnel from 1.9 to 2.04 million comes as war in Ukraine enters seventh month

Vladimir Putin has signed a decree to increase the size of Russia’s armed forces from 1.9 million to 2.04 million, as the war in Ukraine enters its seventh month with no signs of abating.

The Russian president’s decree appears to point to the country’s aim to replenish its military, which has suffered heavy losses in Ukraine and failed to achieve its objective to capture the capital, Kyiv.

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